In this episode I’m joined by Jake Mitchell for an interview and discussion all about the intersections of psychedelics, paramedics, first responders, mental health, addiction, harm reduction, and the future of legalized psychedelic shamanism

About Jake:

Jake is currently working at supervised injection sites in Toronto performing overdose response, counselling, and harm reduction work; while teaching Basic Life Support skills, Mental Health First Aid, and various addiction/mental health workshops. He combines his experience in emergency medicine with his addictions and mental health training to work on the frontlines of the opioid crisis.

He has built his clinical experience as a Primary Care Paramedic in Emergency Medical Services, with research appraisal and mental health crisis expertise. Medical cannabis helped him overcome depression and greatly limit accumulated post-traumatic stress from his wide range of intense experiences through his career. He now helps other first responders and healthcare workers learn how to benefit from cannabis and psychedelic therapies when appropriate. This promoted him to establish the Psychedelic Society of First Responders and Emergency Workers as a peer support network and information hub. His podcast, Flight Of Thoughts, allows him to share what he has learned and talk with diverse guests about a range of surreal topics.

Jake has several years of clinical experience assisting critically ill or injured persons with Basic Life Support, exercising the Primary Care Paramedic scope of practice. This and his growing experience in social service work has allowed him to form an open-minded and empathetic, trauma-informed approach to caring for patients or clients.

with great respect, sat down with friends go through powerful experience

what happened was, as a student, bothered me, things would get stressful, would get feeling in chest of anxiety, sex problems people have that quite often, struggle with performance, correlation with professional performance, almost libido there, sometimes feel you can take on any situation,

felt incapable, didn’t see confidence, a lot was depression, realized through therapy

certain mentors, fear and inadequacy come out in people who represent them

catastrophe thinking, comes up with people with depression and anxiety

if you do suffer, not to throw diagnoses, many mental health problems cross over

brain survival mechanism,

studied more training lab, asked more questions

anxiety, helped me become better paramedic

rushes of cortisol, sleep problems worsening depression in long run

psychedelics brought up feelings allowed me to work through them

sounds of alerts

paramedics at a base, lie down on couch have a little rest, nap if no calls coming in

kundalini energy rise, validated experience in selves and others

felt many times in stressful times, flow state, kundalini, can happen organically as well, in body and mind

tones brought right into memory, call of very severe overdose, very late into student time about to finish

tendency to look at things as the negative, I’m inadequate people don’t trust me, peer support that would help

psychedelics can be used to train first responders, mild doses sub thresholds, more of a flow state, not as vivid

breath on the way to calls, loss of control feeling, horrible, tighting in chest, deep deep breaths diffuse into toher parts of body, 5 second breathes, working up to 7 seconds, repeating to self, got this, gonna do best, no matter what happens, work through with partner, all gonna go as good as it can

instructors, all bleeding stops eventually

little comedy things

dark humor

safe consumption sites, people can show up to sites, bring own substances, can be illegal, they show up, we provide with safe harm reduction gear, new needles, ties, cookers, education and services

listeners open minded, some people against these sites think it stops there, how they gonna get better

big part of that ecological village, really early wide menu of education available to people early in life

different intelligence, not just iq, natural intelligence, grade one planting a seed, watching seed, tail come out the bottom so exciting, that’s what we don’t nurture in children, not everyone is the mathematician

give resources to feel meaningful

having balance of things people agree on

trauma informed approach, perspective, methodology

means every human being experiences life differently experiences trauma differently

respondeand adapt differently, don’t just assume you’ve been through all the same experiences I have, treat you like somebody has had own life own experiences

something activates or affects you, western med, behavioral problems

different things we have to look at

level I don’t understand, ecological village, avoid causing pain and suffering like you see in big citys, respecting each other

a lot of access to mindfulness meditation

understanding of own self, we all experience struggles with physical and mental health, bio-psycho-social approach to things

everybody sees those areas of life as a balance, diet sleep nutrition

mind functioning optimally, face challenges that come day to day

experience good community

spiritual, transcendence

maslow hierarchy of human needs

before you can help somebody achieve the feeling that they have worth

strenghts weaknesses, ability to grow

don’t allow people to build up hierarchy of needs

biological needs, most people don’t sleep enough, proper diet for their body

some people need 8 9 hours of sleep

at our sites, we don’t have access to enough of is food

don’t have access to good sleep and shelter, dope sick, not eating properly, medical problems from lifestyle, stress